Poem 60 ± August 3, 2015

It was a metaphor
for AIDS, for Apartheid, for the other
living on the margin—to think
they only just want to get into the place
everybody else already lives in.

There was a time
when all revolts began
where we lived on the margin
to state, and then to bend. To make the margin wider.

Michael Klein’s fourth book of poems (and some prose), When I Was a Twin, will appear in September 2015 from Sibling Rivalry Press. His first book, 1990, tied with James Schuyler to win a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. He is also the author of two books of prose, The End of Being Known and Track Conditions, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press. He teaches writing in the MFA Program at Goddard College and at Hunter College in New York and lives with his husband, Andrew Hood, in New York and Provincetown.

This poem appears in The Talking Day (Sibling Rivalry, 2013) and is reprinted with kind permission of Sibling Rivalry Press.